ICT and mental health

'This month, I talked to my GP by email. Last year, I thought computers were a waste of time.' When your GP says, 'Drop me an email,' then you know that the future has arrived. This happened recently to a student of one of Digital Unite's band of local, home-visit tutors, who specialise in working with older people and IT. The student had been a 'non-believer', timid in the extreme around IT. Digital Unite tells more...

How do you define 'improved health'? Somebody can be completely pain-free, all systems measuring 'perfect' on any machinery and then die the next day from heart failure. For most people, 'improved health' is entirely subjective and completely relative.

Our student, quoted above, had a long-standing hip problem and wanted to ask her GP for a referral for a 'biomechanical assessment'. He responded (at the second attempt), sending several website links to information about posture and exercises and possible causes of her hip pain. He applied for a referral appointment for her and it was made for, yes, you guessed it: six months' time.

Not a perfect result, but our student does feel that something is being done, and she didn't have to make an appointment to see her GP and then wait an hour in the waiting room before a simple referral letter could be written. Plus she didn't take up road-space, bus-space or car-parking space in order to make the visit. Plus, she isn't forced to walk around bookshops in pain while researching her ailment.

Could you say this woman's health had been improved due to technology? No, but you could say that she was less frustrated and felt she had a little more control over the way she uses her health service.

Non-mechanical diseases
The overwhelming health issues that we see addressed however in our daily work of teaching older people how to use computers and the Internet are not mechanical. Sure, it helps to be able to let people know about 'health informatics', NHS Direct, etc.

But like most home-visiting professionals, most of what we encounter are the non-mechanical 'diseases' of loneliness and isolation. Older students - inevitably 'older' means they are more housebound - quite simply see the computer as a lifeline to the world that has somehow, quite mysteriously, often deserted them in any real, constant, next-door and down-the-road sense

Through email and the Internet often with a minimum of training, students discover an ability to react, respond and initiate, entirely on their own terms and in safety.

Email brings contact with children and grandchildren; the ability to co-ordinate real meetings more effectively; the Internet brings them online banking and bill-paying and shopping; but even more importantly, it brought one student 25 penfriends in one day! Another student rehearsed a band online and ended up playing in the foyer of the Barbican. Another one set up webcams for herself and her sister, both in sheltered housing, one with limited mobility due to her 'job' which is caring for her chronically ill husband, and they chat 'face-to-face' every day.

A recent report showed too that far from being used mainly to cultivate virtual friendships across continents, people were increasingly using local email groups and websites to nurture friendships two streets away.

Loneliness never killed anyone?
In a study of GP visits nationwide on one day, it was found that patients were experiencing an average of two psycho-social problems which affect their health: one of the most common was 'sorrow' (the other is work-stress).

Sorrow can mean different things to different people; but given that we're an increasingly isolated society (we now have, first time ever, more single-person households than multi-person) and that, according to the last census, more than one million older people judge themselves as lonely and isolated; maybe it's about time we did something more to capitalise on the Internet's ability to mitigate this state of affairs.

If your first reaction to reading this is, 'Loneliness never killed anyone,' then you'd be wrong.

Put 'loneliness + health' into any search engine and you'll get a raft of response. It's a subject that's well out of the closet, thanks probably to the Internet's 'uncloseting' effect. In his book, The Broken Heart: the Medical Consequences of Loneliness, Dr James Lynch explores the importance of sustaining relationships and their effects on physical / emotional health. 'Real loneliness,' Dr Lynch says, 'begins with an inability to communicate.' With considerable research data to support his argument that 'the lack of human companionship, the sudden loss of love, and chronic human loneliness are significant contributors to serious disease (including cardiovascular disease) and premature death,' Dr Lynch provides compelling evidence linking the benefits of communication and human interaction to improved health status.

Loneliness may even affect the way our genes respond: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6991584.stm Of course, you can see where we're going here. Rocket science, it aint.

Q. Which age do we live in?
A. The Communication Age?
Q. Who are the most lonely, isolated in our UK community?
A. The elderly.
Q. What can the Internet / email do for isolation?
A. Relieve it, without need for mobility.
Q. Who are the least likely to feel confident enough, wealthy enough, empowered enough to use ICT?
A. The elderly.

There you have the mystery of it - those who can benefit most from new technology, in practice benefit least. It's an issue for everyone at any age, because bad health costs money. And given that we're rapidly approaching an era when most of our population will be 'old' and therefore highly dependent on health services, we need to do our every bit to make things better.

Digital Unite, and other organisations that try to turn the tide of the digital divide (which affects the elderly most radically in terms of both their need and their numbers), do their bit; but more needs to be done. Much more. Like the 3 Rs issue in the last century, most people won't learn 'the ICT basic skill' on their own. Most people need to be helped. And that takes a sensible, simple strategy. Yet, the 8 to 10 million over-50s currently excluded from the benefits of online life (a sixth of the population) don't find sensible, simple ways to access online computers and find out how to use them in a way that suits them.